We are folks who lost stuff
by Zoeeeee
Summary: The previous name of this story was "Losers" [Spoiler alert] If you have not watched Avengers Infinity War & Ant-Man and the Wasp, don't read this story! They thought they knew what sorrow and loss felt like, but they were so so wrong.
1. Losers

A/N: Avengers Infinity War messed me up pretty badly. I'm trying to cope until part 2 comes out. I know many others are doing the same thing, too.

There might be more chapters if I have the time and inspiration to write.

* * *

 **Losers**

Pain. They didn't know if what they were feeling could be called pain anymore. At some point, it became too much. Their hearts were stabbed through repeatedly, ripped out of their chests, stepped on, brutally crushed… Their brains burnt hot with the agony of guilt, sorrow and haunting memories. And now… it was cold. Desperation filled every pore, sadness so great, so terrible that it was just this… numbness that overtook their bodies.

"What are you two idiots doing here? This hole of misery is taken. Find somewhere else."

Steve and Thor didn't hear the small raccoon coming, but they were too tired to react. Despite his words, Rocket sat down between the two big humies, ringed tail poking Steve in the thigh.

"Wanna keep this?" Small furry paws holding a big black gun out to the soldier.

Steve just blinked. Bucky. His best friend, his comrade, his brother in everything but blood… The person who always knew how to make his life better back in the day. Also the person who knew exactly how to destroy him. The sound of Bucky's screams all the way down from the train still haunted Steve. And now, with his flawless memory, the sight of Bucky turning into dust had carved itself into his mind.

"If you like it, it's yours," Steve said quietly. "I can't… I don't know what to do with it."

Silence.

"…are you two gonna sit here all night and whimper?" Rocket scratched his nose. Loudly.

"No-one's making any noise except you, Rabbit." Thor's deep voice rang through the night, somehow sounding quiet.

"You just did, Thunder guy."

"Guys, let's just… not." Steve pinched his nose and sighed.

Silence.

Thor caressed Stormbreaker, little sparks of lightning on the tip of his fingers danced into the air.

"I should have gone for the head." A bitter smile graced the god's face. "A thousand years of blood and battle. All those wars. And I still can't kill properly."

"It's not your fault, Thor." Steve immediately said.

"It's how I feel." A strong wind swept through the grass, the field of Wakanda they were sitting in was beautiful under the stars, but all they saw was darkness and despair. "I should have known. I should have prepared."

"No-one could have prepared for this. The stones, Thanos." Steve shook his head. "I really miss the time when the freakiest thing on Earth was me."

Technology. Gods. Aliens. Magical stones which enabled genocide on a universal level. Sometimes, the World War II veteran wished he would open his eyes and still see today's newspaper with headlines about Hitler's new act of crime against humanity.

"You look normal, ain't nothing freaky about you." Right, and a talking raccoon.

"I'm a science experiment."

"Seriously?" Rocket's eyes widened. "You and me both, pal."

Steve flinched. Bucky used to call him that.

"Hey Thor, were you cut open and played with in the past, too? Because that would make three of us the same kind of losers." The raccoon poked Thor in the muscles curiously.

"No Rabbit, I wasn't. Still a loser though. Lost my parents, lost my hammer, my eye, my planet, my people, and my brother again. Hope you'll never join my kind of loser." Thor kept smiling like he had finally lost his mind, too. But then, what could he do? He could not cry.

"Eh, at least you lost everything before Thanos snapped his fingers. I don't even know what I just lost. Watching Groot die again almost makes me wish I never had him back in the first place."

"Don't say that Rabbit. Time with loved ones is always precious, no matter how little. Talking to Loki again after his first and second death was painful, but at least I had more time." Thor unconsciously rubbed the spot where his brother stabbed him after pretending to be a snake centuries ago.

Suddenly, Steve burst into a hysterical laugh, hugging his stomach like he was shot in the gut.

"Hey, you okay? Are you dying?" Rocket poked Steve with a gun in concern, inching away a bit like he was afraid whatever the soldier caught was contagious.

"Oh, god… We are the same kind of losers after all." His laugh died down, his gut hurt, but no tears.

Silence.

"I saw Bucky die before. Seeing it again… hurts more than last time. After everything he's been through, only to die again." Steve reached out to touch the gun in Rocket's lap. "All those battles I've fought… yet I'm still not used to seeing death. It won't stop hurting, will it Thor?"

"No. The moment it stops… is when you die. Or when you become a monster like Thanos." But they didn't know about the poor green woman lying in the snow of Vormir.

"Where can we find some alcohol on this miserable planet? Quill always…" At his friend's name, the raccoon stopped short. Was Quill still alive after the snap? He was afraid of the answer. Born to do complicated calculations and solve mechanical problems, Rocket had no difficulty knowing that there was a high chance most of his crew… his family was gone. Each of them came from a different race, and half of every race was eradicated.

"There's not enough alcohol in the universe to deal with this…" Steve mumbled softly.

"And the alcohol of Midgard is weak anyway."

Silence.

"How do we move on from this?" Rocket used his hands to beat up grass. "Quill… Quill would probably come up with a stupid plan for time like this. Or 12% of a plan."

"We don't." Steve stated like it was a fact. It was. "There must be a way to fix this. We'll find it."

"You sound so sure. This is not the Chitauri or Ultron, Captain."

"I can't think of anything better to do." Steve shrugged. He finally made peace with his existence. He was born to fight. So fight he would. "The stones took them away. The stones should be able to bring them back."

"Last time we went after an Infinity Stone, I lost Groot." Rocket shouted.

"Last time I was near the space stone, I lost my brother. When I got involved with the Aether, I lost my mother." Thor calmly replied. "The stones took many things from us, Rabbit. I think what the Captain said makes sense. There is a possibility we can use the stones to undo this atrocity Thanos has brought."

"I barely know anything about stones, though. It was just a… guess." Steve felt… something, definitely not hope, when the idea came to him. At least he had an idea, still better than nothing.

Silence

"Well, some asshole explained those rocks to me a while ago when we were hunting the power stone, but I ain't telling you morons anything until you all get some rest." Rocket said forcefully cheerfully. "Get your asses back to that fancy palace and I'll tell you in the morning."

"You should do that, too… um… Rocket." Steve stood up, looking down at the small animal… No, person. He talked, he thought, he felt, so he was a person.

"Yeah, yeah, thought I'lltrack down a raccoon and see what's all the fuss about. Quill calls me one, so I have to prove him wrong."

"I thought you're a rabbit."

"Don't know what that is, either, but I track that down, too."

For a second, Steve felt like he was back at the Avengers compound in one of those mornings when Tony actually joined the team for breakfast. The bickering, the jokes, the lightheartedness. The warmth. And it hurt. Steve did what he usually ended up doing in those mornings.

"Guys, let's just head back together, alright? In the morning I'll ask Princess… (the thought of T'Challa made Steve feel like something got stuck in his throat) or Queen Shuri to show you pictures of rabbits and raccoons, and we'll work everything out. Together."

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A/N: Thank you so much for reading. Please leave me a comment.


	2. Did he know, really?

**Author's note:** Ant-man and the Wasp was a really fun movie. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end, and the jokes were amazing for relieving stress. The end-credits were like a slap to the face to remind me that Infinity War happened.

* * *

 **Did he know, really?**

Scott had always been a joker. He liked to have fun, to see the positive side of life and show people the same thing. It was like breathing for him to blurt out stupid things or act silly to ease the tension. That did not mean he was clueless of despair. In fact, Scott could confidently say he knew despair really well.

The first time he ever failed to be optimistic was probably when he went to jail and was separated from his Cassie, then received the divorce papers soon after. It was a dark time of his life, but luckily, he met Luis and it was not all doom and gloom. He made a friend, and he wasn't as lonely as he thought he was. Scott continued to be the lovable idiot to everyone who knew him, from cellmates to family and friends.

Never had Scott thought he would return to the deepest pit of despair again. Memories of prison did haunt him at times, but not so much because he was good at pushing bad things away. Getting to be with Cassie again cured everything wrong about his life. But now… he could not seem to escape the darkness, not of the Quantum Realm, but from his own mind. The part of the Quantum Realm he was trapped in was actually pretty bright, with shiny golden healing particles. However, the fact that Scott could not reach Hank, nor Hope, nor Mrs. Van Dyne drove him really close to panic. The first thought that crossed his mind was did the Pym-Van Dyne family encounter a problem they could not solve? That would be a very serious problem since they were a family of badasses. The next thought was of course, of Cassie. What would happen if he was trapped here like Mrs. Van Dyne? Would he ever see his lovely little daughter again, or would he have to wait for 30 years like Hope's mother, or maybe longer? What if his little girl needed him, but he couldn't be there and something bad happened to her? What if Cassie thought he abandoned her?

When Scott relatively calmed down a little, he started to wonder if someone would ever find him. Luis and his friends at X-con knew somewhat about what he was doing with Hank, Hope and Mrs. Van Dyne, but he didn't tell them a lot of details because of what happened with the lab and Ava aka Ghost. His ex-wife, Paxton and Cassie were mostly in the dark about the Quantum Realm and the work of a lifetime of Pym-Van Dyne family, and that was for the best, so that the FBI, the government and other nutjobs could not bother them with anything about quantum technology. That left Bill Foster and Ava. Would they even care enough to check if Hank, Hope, Mrs. Van Dyne and Scott were doing alright? They probably would, because Ava still needed the cure. She was relatively stable, but her condition still needed improvement to remain that way. Dr. Foster was knowledgable about the Quantum Realm and its related technology enough to get him out. Until then, Scott just had to wait and survived. Mrs. Van Dyne had done so for 3 decades, there was no way he could not. Hope's mother fought tooth and nail to see her daughter and husband again, so Scott would do the same and beyond for his Cassie. After all, he did survive going sub-atomic the first time for her.

* * *

Scott was pretty proud of himself for somewhat mastering the mind magic like Mrs. Van Dyne did. He did not really understand the scientific explanation behind it, but he knew he could do something similar. He could somewhat manipulate the energy and the solidity of matters, he could also travel quickly through space inside the Quantum Realm. He used what he knew to concentrate on not losing his mind. He held on to his memories of his Cassie, Hope's family and his friends. Sometimes, he felt like he actually relived some of the moments in his life, and Scott was strangely guilty for having the chance to experience the first moment he held his newborn daughter more than once. There were still dark moments when Scott felt like he was as good as dead, but those had become fewer, and he was able to see the positive side of this disaster.

One day, when Scott was reliving that conversation with Casie where she expressed her wish to become his partner, he suddenly felt like he was being pushed outside of his body. There was pressure and there was confusion, and Scott knew exactly what was happening. Someone was pulling him out of the Quantum Realm, and he prayed that they knew what they were doing, because the consequences of mistakes were just too great to ignore.

"Raccoon, do you know what you're doing?" Scott knew that voice, where had he heard it?

"Relaxx, man. I was genetically engineered to do this stuff. Put any machines or contraptions or pieces of technology in front of me, and I will decimate them!" A gruff, arrogant and irritating voice joined the commotion, and Scott desperately wanted to believe the person.

"Let Rocket do his job, if he did not know, he would not have touched it." A strong reasonable voice drowned out others' chattering. Wait… Captain America?

"I hope Scott is doing okay, the Quantum Realm is unpredictable. I've been its victim for years." That was definitely Ava.

Scott's tightly closed eyes blinked open, and he was greeted with the worried look of a group of very bizarre people. The noticeable thing was that Hank, Hope and Mrs. Van Dyne were nowhere to be found. Ava was in normal clothes, which means her condition had not worsened during his absence. Bill Foster was not there, either. Captain America was standing near an intimidating guy with a big-ass axe and a little raccoon. Had he really gone insane in the Quantum Realm?

"Scott, a disaster has struck when you were in the Quantum Realm and…" Ava began, but she just… bit her lips and got teary eyes. The strong-willed ruthless woman hesitating to tell him what happened spoke volumes of how horrible things had gone. His heart fell.

"Bill has… Dr. Pym, his wife and daughter were… Your family was…" She was making an effort, but the words just got stuck. Scott never felt despair like this.

"Ava, Cap… I mean Steve, please, just tell me what happened to them?"

"Mr. Lang, it happened all over the world, this is a global disaster. We did everything we could to stop it, and now we are doing everything we can to fix it." Steve spoke clearly to his old teammate of the Civil War, but the super soldier was also avoiding the question like Ava was.

"Oh you humies, not talking about it does not make it any less real!" The raccoon bared his teeth and snarled angrily, but his eyes were sad. "Buddy, whoever you are, shit hit the fan when you were in wonderland. A giant purple man with a genocidal urge gathered some magic rocks, snapped his fingers and turned half of the universe's population into dust. From the remains of three piles of ash I see here, your friends are probably gone, like mine, like Thor's, like Steve's, and like this lady's, too. Welcome to the Club of Losers, you're welcome."

The raccoon finished his speech, puffed up his ringed tail, picked up his giant gun and walked away, mumbling something like "I need a drink". If Scott did not hear what the raccoon was saying, he would have laughed at the hilarious scene.

Silence swallowed the humans. Half of everyone… was gone? The dirt on the roof they were standing on… was Hank, Hope and Mrs. Van Dyne? He refused to believe it.

"Guys, you're joking right? That's just…"

Steve grimly shook his head, while tears began rolling on Ava's cheeks. Her lips were quivering, and her agony suddenly made Scott feel like he was looking at his daughter. Did Cassie even…?

"Before Sam was gone… he mentioned that your technology, the shrinking suit could bring you into a… reality-bending place. I hope that you survived the snap and we searched for you." Steve's blue blue eyes looked straight into his, the captain's face was pale as a ghost. "Your house was empty except for a giant ant, Mr. Lang. Rocket and I visited your daughter's place, too. We only saw Ava searching for you."

Cassie… Paxton and his ex-wife… Did they all…?

"We're sorry." Ava approached him, and Scott automatically raised his arms to put around her.

His eyes were wet. Turned out he was so so wrong. He did not know anything about despair after all, not until then.

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 **Author's note 2:** Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed this.


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